Porthos's Birthday Game
by jadey36
Summary: Porthos spends his birthday with his musketeer friends and a few bottles of wine.


**Author's Note:** this silly, slightly smutty little fic is set sometime after episode 5, The Homecoming, where Porthos wakes up from his drunken birthday celebrations with no memory of the night before. This wouldn't be unusual, but for the dead body by his side...

Oh, and there were melons as well.

AU, obviously!

* * *

><p><strong>Porthos's Birthday Game<strong>

"Marry, shag, throw off a cliff?"

"Sorry, what did you say?" Aramis lifted his head from the grey-looking pillow he'd pinched off Athos's bed and cocked an unfocused eye at Porthos.

"You heard," Porthos replied, helping himself to another cup of wine. "You're playing too." This directed at Athos and d'Artagnan, the former perching on the edge of his dishevelled bed, the latter slouching under the open window.

"Playing what?" d'Artagnan asked, holding out his cup for a refill and finding his friends too full of wine-fuelled lethargy to bother to oblige him.

"It's one of Porthos's childish games, "Athos informed him. "Though, arguably, not the most childish he's ever played."

"What's the most chil—"

Athos shook his head, warning d'Artagnan not to go there.

"Look," Porthos said. "It's me birthday and I'm allowed to play games on me birthday."

"Not blowing melons off Aramis's head this year, then?" d'Artagnan asked, lurching to his feet in order to refill his cup. He put out his hands to steady himself. "Whoa. The floor's moving."

"No, that would be you." Athos leaped to his feet and grabbed d'Artagnan around the waist. "I think you've had enough wine, my friend," he said, helping the young man back to his former position under the window.

"Nah." Porthos poured and handed the young musketeer another drink despite Athos's cautionary words. "After the muddy-street-dead-man-almost-getting-hanged-thing last year, I decided it would be safer to give the melons a miss this year."

"That is no reason," Athos said, "for us all ending up in my less than salubrious room, drinking my entire wine stock."

"Your room was the closest," Porthos said, "and you've got wine to spare. Now, let's play."

Athos gave Porthos a withering look and poured himself another drink, a large one.

Aramis pushed himself off the bundle of cloaks he was lying on and did likewise.

"Must we?" d'Artagnan asked.

"The only way to avoid playing," Aramis advised the young musketeer, "is to drink yourself into oblivion."

"Precisely," Athos said, lifting his cup and then downing the contents in one go.

However, by the time the musketeers were close to reaching oblivion, the idea of not playing Porthos's game didn't seem such a good one any more.

* * *

><p>"That Alice what's-her-name," Porthos said, staring dreamily into his empty cup. "The candle maker's widow. I'd marry her. That's if I wanted to marry anyone."<p>

"Shag?" Aramis asked, rolling onto his back in an effort to get comfortable.

"Flea, of course. She was great. Not the cleanest bed linen in town, I'll admit. Sometimes I didn't know if it were the bed bugs or her pinching me bum. Great with her hands she was."

Porthos raised his cup to his mouth, frowned when he found it empty.

"Throw off a cliff?" d'Artagnan prompted, smiling hugely at having managed four words in a row without stumbling over them. Clearly he wasn't as near to oblivion as he thought he was, or as his uncooperative limbs seemed to suggest he was.

"Not a woman, obviously," Porthos replied. "Me, I'm a gentleman, even if I was gutter born. There are a few men I'd throw off a cliff. Not for their lack of sexual prowess, you understand, just because I hate them. None of you lot, of course. Me horse, probably. He hates me that horse. Yeah. I'd throw me horse off a cliff."

D'Artagnan scowled. He liked horses.

Porthos looked down at a quietly snoring Aramis and gave him a firm nudge with his boot. "Oi, wakey-wakey. It's your turn."

"Huh? What?" Aramis lifted his head and blinked sleepily at Porthos.

"Marry?" Porthos prompted.

"I'd love to," Aramis said, a dreamy grin gracing his lips. "Just name the day."

"No, you dolt. The game! Who'd you marry, if you had to?"

Aramis pushed himself to a sitting position and ran a hand through his tousled hair. "Are we by any chance still playing the marry, shag, cliff game?"

"I'm afraid so," Athos said. "More wine?"

Aramis waved him away. "I think I should decline. If this room spins any more than it already is, I shall either fly out the open window over there or ruin your not very comfortable pillow."

"Please take the flying out the window option," Athos said, eyeing his sorry-looking pillow.

"Well?" Porthos prompted.

"Not very." Aramis produced a lace handkerchief from his sleeve and wiped his flushed brow.

"I meant well as in who would you marry, not your current state of health."

"Ah, right." Aramis scratched his chin and then said, "Well, obviously I can't marry the queen, though I'd like to. Adele maybe, but she's scarpered. Isabelle if she hadn't become a nun or died." Aramis hung his head mournfully and, with a sigh, gradually tipped towards the floor.

Porthos gave him another kick. "Shag?"

Aramis grunted in annoyance and raised his head to glare at Porthos. "What now? We have company."

"The game, idiot."

"Ah, yes. The game. Well, any well-proportioned woman, really. Such exquisite creatures, women are. Queen Anne, I'd shag her. Well, I did, of course. Again then. Definitely. Maybe after the baby's born, though."

"Throw off a cliff?"Athos hastily cut in, not so drunk that he couldn't see Aramis's answers becoming even more indiscreet than they already were. D'Artagnan and Porthos had both learned of Aramis's impropriety at the abbey during a drunken game of strip poker, but they hadn't yet put two and two together following Queen Anne's announcement of a royal babe being on the way.

"Like dear Porthos here," Aramis replied. "I am most definitely a gentleman. Even the old crones in The Wren don't deserve plummeting to their deaths. The king, I suppose, because he is going to be father to—"

"Let's not wander into the realms of treason, Aramis," Athos said in a warning undertone. "Here." He thrust a cup of wine into Aramis's reluctant hands. "Oblivion, remember?"

"Your turn farm boy," Porthos boomed.

At least it sounded like a boom to d'Artagnan, who could hear clearly but was having trouble making out objects in the room, indeed the room itself.

"My turn what?"

"Who'd you marry?"

"Constance."

"Shag?"

"Same. Did, in fact. Only once. Lots of broken crockery, I seem to remember."

Athos and Porthos exchanged a puzzled look.

Aramis looked up and smiled. "Ah, happy memories."

"What?" Porthos barked, eyes wide in shock. "You didn't shag Constance too, did you?"

"No. I meant the broken crockery thing. Spent many a happy hour squeezed inside larders with obliging scullery maids and the household china."

"Throw off a cliff, d'Artagnan?" Porthos prompted after d'Artagnan lapsed into forlorn silence.

"Myself if Constance doesn't leave M. Bonacieux."

"Throwing M. Bonacieux off a cliff might be a better solution," Athos suggested.

"What about you then, Athos?" Aramis asked. "We've all spoken. It's your turn."

"As I said before: this game is childish."

"Spoilsport." Porthos poured himself some more wine, slopping a goodly amount of it on Athos's bed. "How about we throw the rest of your wine stock out the window." He put down his drink and made to stand, his face serious.

"However." Athos held up a staying hand. "In the interests of fair play, I will answer." He picked up an empty wine bottle. "I would marry this bottle. I would shag this bottle and I would—"

"You can't shag an inanimate object," d'Artagnan pointed out, feeling slightly soberer having talked of Constance and because it was raining and the rain was coming in through the open window soaking the back of his head and shirt.

"I beg to differ," Porthos said with a wink. "Admittedly a candle snuffer is nothing compared to Alice's expert fingers but—"

"Porthos!" Athos admonished. "I'm sure we all have an imagination, including the boy here."

D'Artagnan stared at Athos and gulped.

Athos contemplated the empty bottle in his hands for a short while and then said, "Who needs a woman when you have a bottle's contents to keep you company and the bottle itself to be your whore." He frowned. "I have clearly drunk too much and shot my mouth off. A rare thing indeed."

"Did we finish?"Aramis asked, sitting bolt upright, blinking furiously. "Only I nodded off there for a moment."

"Athos was on shagging," Porthos informed him.

"A bottle?" Aramis asked.

"Yep."

"That reminds me of the time that you and I got slammed on Armagnac and then—"

Athos gave Aramis a warning shake of the head, nodded towards d'Artagnan. "Farm boy, remember. Might be a bit touchy about the misuse of livestock."

"Oh, yes, sorry. Have you done throw off a cliff yet?"

Athos noticed d'Artagnan's eyes flicking between Athos's crotch and the empty bottle he was currently rolling in his hands.

"Quite possibly the boy here if he ever takes it in his mind to breathe a word of what I've just said outside this room." Athos gave d'Artagnan a hard stare.

"Not a word, I promise."

"Good. More wine?" Athos reached under his bed and produced yet another bottle of wine.

D'Artagnan held out a hand to take it and then abruptly snatched it back, changing his mind. After Athos's confession, he wasn't sure he wanted his hands around one of Athos's wine bottles, full or empty.

Noticing the boy's shocked face, Porthos laughed. "Perhaps we should play another game. Anyone got a melon on them?"


End file.
